


Sweetest Perfection

by martinsharmony



Category: Depeche Mode, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Diary/Journal, Essays, M/M, fangirling, non-fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 23:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11816256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martinsharmony/pseuds/martinsharmony
Summary: A personal essay on how I got into fan-fiction, why I like it and what keeps me coming back.





	Sweetest Perfection

**Author's Note:**

> On the I am JohnLocked: Fan Fiction Writers and Readers Facebook group, a question came up today asking how you got into fan fiction. I had written this right before The Final Problem aired and wanted to share. This seemed like the most reasonable venue for doing so.  
> Unfortunately, the discovery of fan fiction is wrapped up in with the most difficult time I've ever had in my life. I've found balance (mostly) now, in case you were wondering. I still read weekly, if not almost daily. Every once in a while a fic will grab me like those original ones did, but I'm almost sad to say it's a rare event. It's thing I'm always chasing, however.  
> I mention people I know and this is rather personal, so I'm locking this to Ao3 users.  
> The fics that I mention that I've written are also here at Ao3. None are JohnLock.  
> 

It’s happening again.

I’m drowning in fandom. I’m obsessed. Practically every waking moment, I’m thinking about it. I’m having trouble focusing on anything else. I’m almost glad it will be “over” in little over a week. I’ll get past it and it will fade. Until then, I have to endure the burden. However, it’s the most exciting, engulfing, [sweetest perfection](http://archives.depechemode.com/lyrics/sweetestperfection.html) that has ever got a hold of me. It’s my obsession, and I absolutely love it.

It grabbed me this time, just like it did last time. In an instant. I was hooked. Immediately. I remember it like it was yesterday. Last time, it was my favorite band. It was 2009, just after the release of their album from that year. The song – the first release from that album, has this part in it where the 2 lead singer’s voices come together in the most perfect, beautiful, sexy harmony. The first singer starts, and then the 2nd singer comes in and you hear his gorgeous, beautiful voice, singing along in harmony. It’s sex. And it’s beautiful. I was lying in bed one night not too long after the song came out, and it struck me:  _Are there stories about them – being together???_  It was all I could do to not get up out of bed and go find out right that minute. The next chance I was alone (I believe the next day was a Saturday), I went to go look. It started out being hard to find. I found all the main fan fiction sites, and there were little bits of it here and there. I read my first fics. I remember being squicked by graphic sex scenes. I was interested in the romance. The “what ifs”. First kisses, first declarations of attraction and love, or no kisses at all. Just subtext.

Then I found a website. Let’s call it MYM. At last, I found a community of women who shared what I did. We lived, ate and breathed the same passion. We all wanted them to be in love with each other and “secretly together”. Mostly the 2 lead singers, but there were other pairings. There were other communities too, but this one was where I found my niche. I eventually became comfortable with the graphic sex. It went on like that for about 2 years.

It (partly) destroyed my marriage.

I have all kinds of reasons for leaving my ex-husband. I know I was already unhappy. That began around 2007 or so, when he became depressed and we began to grow apart. This was in 2009, sometime later. He had been going to help his best friend with his new house every weekend. And before that, he had been going to go hang out with other friends. He was usually gone on the weekends. It got to where I looked forward to it. I wanted him to just go away so I could do what I wanted.

I was so focused and consumed with the fics, the community, and the band itself that I couldn’t imagine any other way to be. I couldn’t imagine life without it. It was all consuming. I had trouble focusing at work. I stayed up late. I didn’t sleep well. I rushed through everything else in my life to reward myself with reading fiction and following the tour. Soon, I began writing it. I ended up writing a few stories and becoming a co admin of the website. I made friends there.

I was aroused  _all the time_. More interested in sex than I had been in years. And I developed new sexual preferences. I know the stories helped with that – or maybe they just made me consider and accept something I already knew I liked but was repressing? I know the mental visions certainly did “help things along”. But I wasn’t reading the stories to get off sexually. Well, sort of? Not exactly.

The thing that I crave, that I get addicted to when I think about or read this sort of thing, is what I call the  _heart flutter_. It’s a feeling in my chest, that’s vaguely sexual, but at its heart – not exactly. The sexual arousal is sort of like a (happy? annoying?) side effect. That is not my end goal. It’s the shaky, fluttery feeling in my chest that feels like the most amazing thing in the world. It feels like love. It feels like romance. It’s more like getting off emotionally. And obtaining it is so difficult and fleeting. I used to get it when I watched Moonlighting, Hunter and Remington Steele when I was a preteen and the sexual tension that those shows brought to the screen. The fics caused the heart flutter every single time,  _without fail_. It was reliable. It was something I needed desperately. I guess I’ve been a shipper pretty much my whole life.

I told my husband about it about a month or so (I think?) after I had gotten into it. I felt the need to….confess? I tentatively broached the subject. I told him that I needed to tell him something. That I’ve discovered something. Something called slash, and I _really_ like it. I had to explain what that was. I told him it’s stories where 2 guys get together, and mine are about my favorite band. He didn’t react too much, at the time.

As time went on and I got deeper into it, it started to cause problems. At work, we got the edict that we could no longer use the internet for personal use. I was  **DEVASTATED**. They were on tour, and were getting ready to play a very important show. I was depressed because I couldn’t be on the website (yes, at work, but I stayed away from the adult parts of the site while at work) and keep up with things. I didn’t have a smart phone. I eventually got laid off. I’m not sure if my going on the website and various other activities was the cause of it, (Facebook was new at the time) but I’m sure it didn’t help matters. At home, I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t interact normally with my husband anymore. The fandom was all I could think about, and look forward to spending time doing. I became more out of shape because I was sitting at the computer way more often. I reconnected with an old flame and thought about him a lot too. Met him for dinner. Messaged with him. Flirted with him. I started locking my computer. My husband became jealous where he never had been before. He broke into my email. We fought all the time.

Then I met my future ex-boyfriend. I became obsessed with him. He became obsessed with me (believing my marriage was over and that it was just a matter of time before I would leave). I told him about the slash. He was accepting. So now I had 2 obsessions. There was no room left for my husband.

I left my husband and lost my job at the same time. Almost my entire team lost their jobs – I don’t believe it had anything to do with me. I’m glad it happened now, but at the time, keeping or not keeping my job was going to play an important part of whether or not I intended to stay married. I had actually decided to stay married if I were let go. That’s the opposite of what happened.

After I left him and moved out on my own, I was unemployed. I needed to find a job, so I couldn’t spend time on the website. I had to spend all of my time looking for a new job. Plus I was now dating my future ex-boyfriend, and those first few “honeymoon” months were more than enough to fill the hole that slash had left. I had no more time (or I could say  _need_ ) to read slash. My obsession diminished. The site’s attendance had also dwindled, so there was not as much activity.

During the past 5 years, I’ve barely even read a fic. The website is now dead, although I have ownership of it now.

I was fairly miserable during the past 4 years or so. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my boyfriend, even though way down deep it was the thing I knew I needed to do. I even moved in with him in an effort to REALLY know for sure. I finally left him in July of this past year. At first I felt liberated, then depressed when he began dating again.

So, this past Christmas, I was still rather depressed. I didn’t set up a tree for the first time ever. I had a very low key Christmas and didn’t do much. Didn’t go out like I usually do. Just spent time with a couple of friends, my parents and my sister’s family.

After Christmas, but before the New Year, I saw an ad on Facebook for a closed group. The cover photo for the group, was a very well done Photoshopped image…of John and Sherlock kissing.

Something clicked inside me. I felt the heart flutter again. I was instantly riveted, and watching it happen.  _“Oh.”_ I caught my breath, and down I went.

I knew about the show, of course. My ex-boyfriend introduced me to it. I had known that Sherlock Holmes was rather homo-erotic, and always has been. I had enjoyed the show, but I wasn’t obsessed with it. Until now.

The season premiere was January 1st. On PBS. I don’t have cable. I don’t have an antenna. Within a week, I had fired Tumblr back up and followed dozens of fellow “JohnLock” shippers, joined several groups on Facebook, started watching a series of YouTubes explaining “The JohnLock Conspiracy (TJLC)”, investigated cable TV, got tickets to the Fathom season finale event at the movie theater, got an antenna, got a smart Blu Ray player, a Roku, Netflix, and associated cables and hooked them up in a desperate effort to find a way to watch the premiere. I had backup plans if those didn’t work out. Then I watched the last show from the previous season that I had not yet seen (twice), watched the mini web episode (twice), and re-watched the last episode I DID see (again, twice), and, since then - the series premiere and the following episode. There is only one left. It’s going to happen. I know it.

The experience mirrors the all-encompassing, obsessive, addicted,  _-can’t think about anything else-_  experience I had last time. This time I’m single.

Part of the obsession this time is that I believe the payoff – John and Sherlock kissing – is real and really will actually happen. Everything I’ve watched and read concerning theories, symbolism and history has led up until this point. It should be happening next week. And then we will have to wait another year for a new season. Maybe.

I’ve been in this for about 2.5 weeks now. I’m not sleeping well, not eating well, I’m choosing to spend time alone watching rather than spend time with my friends (sometimes at least), my work is suffering. Fortunately it’s the holidays and I can kind of pass it off that way, but I  _know_  I haven’t been working. I’m headed to a work related conference as I write this, but It’s going to be very hard to concentrate and focus. I know it. I know it’s going to be on my mind every hour of every day.

I’m not going to be able to watch the season finale…I’ve had an event planned for weeks. I’ll be in media blackout the next day because I  _refuse_  to have spoilers. I know it’s going to happen and I want to bathe in it. I want it to consume me. I want to drown in it and not come up for air.

I want to live here.


End file.
